Defense

There’s Something Wrong with Every Body

By Terence Gillespie October 9, 2014

Find out what’s wrong with yours and deal with it.

That’s what my friend Seroj said when I told him I had hemochromatosis. He’s right. We all have at least one thing wrong with our bodies. And finding out what it is can be a life boosting insight.

Seroj has a form of diabetes and is now glad for it. Dealing with it conferred benefits beyond the condition. He’s healthier now because of (How he dealt with) his diabetes!

No Body is Perfect?

When preparing for Mr. Olympia, Arnold said that no matter how perfect a body appears none have perfect symmetry. All parts have to brought into balance with the whole. His sloped shoulders and small calves made his point.

Lack of symmetry is a visual cue to lack of internal perfection. No body is perfectly symmetrical on the outside so why would the inside be any different?

It’s a miracle our bodies are as perfect as they are. We take for granted billions of complex relationships and functions that keep us alive. Our bodies are changing every second with all cells replacing themselves every seven years. Look at a picture of yourself seven years, ago. It’s not you, anymore!

Not IF, but WHAT?

Don’t waste time wondering if something’s wrong with your body. Just find out what it is. It’s liberating and the benefits to dealing with it may be enormous. The remedy, itself, will most likely benefit the rest of your body and life. If you have the conditions I do then dealing with them may even safe your life!

What’s Wrong With Me?

There’s two things wrong with my body: An inherited predisposition to high blood pressure and a blood problem called hemochromatosis. Both are silent, painless and deadly. But, not for me. Dealing with each has been a boost to overall health and quality of life. The remedies, nutrients, change of habits and diet needed to neutralize these ailments conferred benefits beyond the correction of the initial conditions.

For more on how I’ve eliminated the deadly threat of hypertension see my article on how to eliminating Hypertension without using drugs. The treatment for hemachromatosis is bloodletting like they used to do with leeches to rid the bodies of evil spirits. For more on that journey see, “How To Save Your Own Life“.

The Earlier, The Better

The earlier you find out what’s wrong with your body, the better. The condition(s) won’t go away through ignorance. You may not get the luxury of symptoms for a problem that can probably be balanced or avoided.

I found out about my high blood pressure while donating blood and hemachromotosis when it was diagnosed in my brother. Both of my body’s deficiencies are silent killers if left untreated.

My doctor friends joke that everyone should be their own doctor. Maybe that’s reaching too far. But, we should understand our bodies as well as we understand our cars.

Come to think of it . . . there’s usually something wrong with my car, too!

Banking

Catherine’s Financial Detox

By Terence Gillespie September 20, 2014

This is a re-post of a summary of Catherine Austin-Fitt’s financial detox plan as given to Max Keiser five years, ago. The 15 pieces of wisdom extracted from the video are timeless. If you had started working on them in 2009 it would have had a dramatic impact on your life. Five years from now the same will be true about starting to work on them, today.

Catherine Austin Fitts is a breath of fresh air.

With a keen understanding of the links between politics, corruption, and money she is unmasking economic con-games, one by one, for the benefit of us all. Give her 15-minutes and she’ll explain the most complex schemes and enable you to see right through all sides of the rhetoric we’ve been hearing all our lives.

Not only that, but, she offers powerful solutions and action plans that can be implemented within minutes of watching one of her videos.

Listen to her describe her “Bailout Plan” in the video, below, which I found on The Edge with Max Keiser.

1. – Save Time

Cut out TV and corporate media. They’re a brainwashing waste of time. You’ve got better things to do and think about. Get radical about cutting this out and save 5-10 hrs a week of “bad training”.
Get corrupt people and enterprises out of your life. They get access to your data and money. Consider carefully the banks, brokerage houses or institutions you do business with.
Control personal data. There is no privacy. Think through who you do business with and who has access to your data.
Compliance – be impeccable with compliance. In a situation with highly complex rules and no privacy it’s easy to get caught up in a dragnet.
Simplify. The less things you’re responsible for the better.

2. – Get Smart

Implementing 1. gives you time for 2. and 3.

See things as they truly are.
The greatest wealth creating entity of all time is the family. Think strategically about your family and friends.
If you’re not in a conspiracy you need to start one. Conspiracy means to breathe together. Start a conspiracy with your family to benefit each other and keep corrupt institutions out of all your lives.
Network with other people who know what’s going on. Nobody is as smart as all of us.
If you have time, understand history. What’s happening today is logical if you understand the history of things like narcotics trafficking, mortgage fraud, etc.

3. – Reposition Your Assets

The goal of the games of economic warfare are control and equity.
Build your equity. Invest in your health and your knowledge. Think strategically about managing these key assets.
We’re leaving a large bubble and now people want hard assets. Shift out of phony financial instruments into securities and hard assets with solid economics.
Stick with long term trends. Follow the tapeworm. Don’t be confused by economic nonsense into investing into anything that is not long term and high quality like food, water, gold, Precious metals.
Demonetize. We put money into financial assets, get yield, then buy things. This is a losing proposition.

Catherine Austin Fitts is always worth your time. Check out her blog which she calls, The Solari Report.

Church

Church Preparedness Plan

By Terence Gillespie September 17, 2014

Scriptural Basis & Motivation

It was wise for Joseph and the Pharoah to trust God’s warning and prepare for the Egyptian famine. God warned, they listened, and Joseph prepared. By setting aside the wheat and supplies to save a nation Joseph was an active participant in God’s plan. This pattern in scripture well established: God, while capable and in control of all, weaves his people into the unfolding of his plans. Whether it be for spreading the Gospel, delivering a message or preparing his people for hard times, we are part of God’s plans.

“By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” — Hebrews 11:7

As you read through applicable scriptures ask yourself where you may fit into His unfolding plans. The answers will be different for everyone as we are each unique parts of the body. The only thing we all have in common and know, for sure, is that we all play a role in God’s plan for redemption and kingdom come.

“The prudent sees danger and hides himself,
but the simple go on and suffer for it.”

“One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil,
but a fool is reckless and careless.”

“For the simple are killed by their turning away,
and the complacency of fools destroys them;
but whoever listens to me will dwell secure
and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.” — Proverbs 22:3 , 14:16 , 1:32-33

We’re told the prudent see danger and hide from it, that the wise must turn away from evil, and to listen to God to be at ease and without dread of disaster. And so, wisdom, itself, makes us part of God’s plan in listening, seeing, hiding and turning away.

We are saved by faith and not by works and yet, far from being complacent, God’s wisdom is for us to participate in his plans. In saving us by faith, God has, in turn, made us part of his plan of salvation for others.

Prepare the Way of the Lord!

Mission Statement

An Emergency Kit in every Home,
A Radio in every Small Group,
A Communication Plan for every Family.

Goals

To maintain a preparedness plan for the church to be kept as a working document, updated periodically and distributed to the church.
To address as many needs, in advance, of predictable emergencies that may occur in the local area.
To be flexible and open to adjustment should the membership decide they have been lead strongly to prepare for something that has been made known to them.
To ensure that members of the church are able to communicate and gather together in the absence of conventional means of communication.
To encourage and give specific suggestions to members of the church to prepare for their own emergency needs so that they may be able to better serve each other, the church, and the local community, in times of need.
To share plans with local sister churches to enable the church to more easily come together in times of need.
To work towards a longer term goal of being able to assist the broader community in times of need.

Strategy

“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” — John 15:7-8

A Foundation in Two Steps

Most of the goals of this plan are achieved in only two steps: 1) Ensuring that each family has the items they would need in an emergency and, 2) Enabling each family to communicate with the rest of the church in the absence of phone, web or e-mail services.

After these two things are achieved the rest of the plan becomes a means to improve quality of life, address special needs of the church in an emergency, and enable the church to better serve each other and the broader community.

A Decentralized Plan

This is a decentralized plan for many compelling reasons:

Supplies are prepositioned at the place they will be used.
The work of transport and distribution is performed, in advance, which frees up resources during an actual emergency.
The purchasing, storage, maintenance and periodic updates required for all kits is performed by the church family that will be using the items.
Standardized kits and supplies can be customized to the individual needs of each family.
The church is not be made a target for theft and loss which deceases the potential for crime while ensuring that supplies will be available in times of emergency.

Primary Determining Factor

The primary determining factor of the success of this plan, after God’s will, is the number of families who address their own basic needs, in advance. To a large extent this will determine our ability to make ourselves available to serve others.

The more church families that can manage to acquire all the items recommended in the TDF Kits (Things That Disappear First) the more each member family “. . .will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”

The church is only as prepared as each member family is prepared. All desire and ability to serve each other and the broader community is an outgrowth of the completeness of providing for these needs, in advance.

Gathering in His Name

“Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” — Matthew 18:19-20

Only a small percentage of members need have radios to enable most of the church to communicate and arrange to gather in His name. For example, one radio per small group would have a dramatic impact in enabling the entire church to stay in touch and is probably the best first step.

The optimal number of radio operators will be determined by mapping out the location of all church members, taking geographical limitations into consideration and performing subsequent tests.

Serving these primary operators can be any number of relays (Other members using FRS/GMRS, CB Radios and household AM/FM receivers).

Clearing the Decks (& Network), in Advance

It is crucial to understand that no matter how many radios are used to stay in touch the “Network” can be easily overwhelmed. The most likely culprit of that overwhelm will be requests for items described in the TDF kits. In this way, the TDF kits and radio network are intimately tied together and affected by one another. To the extent that such items can be obtained, in advance, by each church family the network is freed up to relay important news, special requests and address aspects of an emergency that cannot be anticipated.

Therefore, as a church, we address as many needs as can be anticipated, in advance, so that our work during an emergency can best focused on serving others.

The Rest of the Plan

The rest of the plan can be as detailed and complete as the church may see fit to document. The entire plan rests on God’s will, the willingness of each family to set aside supplies for their own basic needs and the ability of the church to communicate with each other in the absence of conventional services.

The strategy for the rest of this plan will be gathered and documented through these “Next Steps”:

Sharing the Plan with Church Leaders & Members
Sharing Thoughts & Plans with Other Churches?
Incorporating Feedback into Plan
Enabling Members to Retrieve Updated Plans
Embed Templates in the Plan to Assist each Family
Add to Family Directory- List of Skills, Tools, Special needs.
Designate Radio Operators in Family Directory
Create Map of Operators

Creativity

Jumpstart Your House in the Country. Build it Backwards (Or maybe not at all)!

By Terence Gillespie September 11, 2014

The most useful things built on land are built last. I propose reversing that order. Build it backwards. Small structures provide big comfort and improvements relative to their size and cost. Their return on investment is high because the investment is small and the return is relative to the “nothing” of vacant land.

Building backwards and small enables you to get the most important uses out of your land first, and soon. There are many advantages other than a high ROI. One might be to rescue this widely held and rarely realized dream from the never-to-be-crossed-out section of your bucket list.

We’ve started the project of securing a retreat in the country and there’s been a world of decisions in choosing one plot of ground. That part of the journey is ongoing and best left to a separate article. Between scouting trips thoughts have turned to solidifying the vision. As the vision became clear I started thinking about ways to Optimize the effort-to-value ratio of building any house in the country. We’ll be building across state lines so remote access factors come into play in our optimization approach, as well.

Plan the Site – Then Build Small and Useful

You have to plan the site anyway, right? Planning is an expense that enables every downstream cost (Including time) to be optimized.

Plan everything your dreaming of for the site. Make sure it fits with the natural flow of the topography. Be practical and figure what you want and what you don’t. Consider everything including the next owner and future generations. And when you’re done pick the smallest most useful element from your plans and build it first.

Easements and Road Access

If you don’t have road access or need an easement then you’ve got some road or legal work to do. Depending on your site design, however, it’s possible your first small structure is some distance from the main building site. If that’s the case then you’ll only need road access to the first structure. Working on that, and leaving the larger road work project aside, for now, still fits the general idea of building it backwards.

Universal Site Plan

If you plan well your plan will capture the universal truths of the lay of the land. Future owner preferences will vary though none would benefit from going against the natural flow of the land.

If circumstances change before you actually build out your vision then most of the things you’ve already built have a good chance of fitting in with the next owners vision. Though not more important than your own values and goals there’s good reason to believe that well-built structures in-line with the natural flow of the land will become permanent beyond you.

Possibilities

My working definition of useful is anything that provides shelter, storage, rent, access or produces income or savings. Ideally, it’s something you would have gotten around to building anyway and decided to build first rather than last.

Covering every possibility is impossible. There’s a continuous line of structures from a tent to the Taj Mahal. Here’s a trigger list to get your creative juices flowing:

The popular descriptions of structures bleed into each other. At what point does a shed become a garage? When you use it as one. What’s the difference between a shed and a Gable? Roof design and quality. The difference between a cabin and a cottage? Depends on who you’re talking to about the property.

For Example

We’re securing a retreat in the country where we’ll build a downsized semi-off-grid version of the house we currently live in. We live in a 3200 sq. foot home and could easily chop off 1000 sq. feet as long as there is storage and room for guests.

We have a clear vision of the design and function of our future home in the country. We are also in the advanced stages of choosing the exact location. Once we’ve decided and bought the land there’s some big decisions to make. Made badly, or not at all, and the whole project could grind to a halt.

Build or Sell?

If our vision is clear why not find an existing place that fits and buy it?

No debt. Purchasing the land and building slowly is a form of self-financing that keeps us from having to take a loan.
Flexibility. As circumstances change and money comes and goes we can make optimal choices on the margin about the timing, cost and usefulness of the next step.
Working harder now to build a second house will enable us to rent our current house in the future for retirement income.
Doing so would require selling our current home and moving immediately. In addition to disrupting my wife’s job we prefer to hold onto our current house for backup.
I like to build things and would prefer designing and building exactly what we want (Where we want it).

Most Bang for the Buck

The last thing we need is land we don’t use. Our best use for land would be to provide:

Overnight Stays – Comfortable enough so they’ll actually happen.
Storage – For Tools and Supplies.
Income – Rental or from our direct use.
Security – For our retreat and securing the property in our absence.

These are the functions we’ll keep foremost in mind when deciding what to build first. The sooner a stucture provides one of these functions the better. Chosen wisely we could fulfill all these needs with minimal cost and effort and spread more ambitious plans over time.

Overnight Stays

We could stay in a motel, hotel, apartment, rental cottage, cabin or at a friend’s house. There’s nothing like the occasional motel room to freshen up. However, we’d prefer to put money directly into improvements wherever possible.

Tent & Rental Car

Realistically, it will be yours truly driving a rental car, setting up a tent and enjoying some getaway camping, at first. This zero structure lo-fi method is a custom fit for me (Supplemented with an occasional motel room). Some of the best adventures I’ve been on were done car camping with a tent. I can’t think of a better way to stay overnight while jumpstarting our place in the country.

Lean-to or Shed

Depending on the land the first structure will be either a Lean-to and Firepit or a custom shed. Either will provide extra shelter and comfort for future solo trips. The Lean-to would become an outdoor gathering place when we’re living on the land, permanently. The shed would be a great place to store supplies and tools and also be a notch above a tent for shelter. Done well, either one will give a sense of accomplishment and start momentum towards the next improvement.

While building the first structure I’ll collapse the tent and check-in to a motel room to recuperate, now and then. Our location shouldn’t be more than 30-40 miles away from one. I’ll keep tools in the truck and haul supplies as needed. My SUV has been a champ playing this role on local builds. Though it hasn’t been necessary I could always rent a local U-haul for a day to haul large materials.

Mobile Home or RV

My wife will go two nights in a tent or lean-to. Longer than that and it’s time for a motel room. If we ever hope to stay on the land, together, for longer than a week then we’re talking mobile home or RV. Happily, mobile homes and RV trailers can be bought for a song, nowadays.

If we go with the mobile I’ll prepare the site and have it delivered. If we go with an RV I’ll pull it on-site with the truck. Either one is a big step up from, and will supplement, the lean-to or shed.

Time Out for Perspective

This is a big step. If I can make overnight stays a pleasant experience it would get my family on-site more often and provide support for the next build. That would pave the way for making progress on the rest of the project. If our project gets stopped we still have land, a shed for on-site storage and a comfortable means for overnight stays. Add the rental of a small public storage unit and we’d have a Bug Out Location, already.

There will have been significant expenses, at this point. However, in relation to their value it smacks of Optimal bang for the buck.

Nothing Wasted

Notice all of the above options leave nothing wasted though we’ll be implementing only four of them depending on the site:

The rental car gets returned.
Use or sell the tent at a garage sale.
The lean-to and firepit become an outdoor family gathering place for BBQ’s.
Everyone needs a shed and a good one, at that.
The RV can accommodate guests or be taken on your next vacation.
The mobile home can become a guesthouse, sold or moved.

Storage

Everybody needs a place to put things. Building requires tools and supplies and so do humans. Kick back on a hammock all week and your food and water is still better off out of the heat of the rental car. The questions are should the storage be:

Underground?
On-site or off?
Secured by something/someone other than you?

I find underground storage options to be more romantic than practical. It’s expensive to build reliable underground structures and the drop-ins are no picnic with their delivery charge and crane installation. Completely concealing underground storage is hard unless it’s kept small and dispersed.

Until I have someone on the property full time my answer to off-site storage is yes. More specifically, we’ll supplement our on-site shed with a public storage unit. When we’re off site everything we can’t afford to lose goes into a public storage unit. That’s only $35/mo where we’re looking; cheap insurance for expensive tools.

A side benefit of renting public storage is it gives you a local ship-to address while you’re remote. Ask a friend (Or the on-site storage folks?) to receive the shipment and put the materials into storage for you. When you come into town stop by and pick up what you need to get started.

Gotta Love These Pole Barns

A larger pole barn is a possible one-building solution to overnight stays, storage and a little bit of security for the trouble. There are options to insulate them if it fits your long term goals for the structure. In fact, a pole barn that fits the site is so useful my first title for this article was, “Build the Barn First!”. However, building backwards is a more complete way to say it and opens up more possibilities.

If it fits the site plan we may skip the shed and go right for a larger pole barn. If so it would make sense to consider one big enough to house an RV. In the event we decide to buy an RV for overnight stays the barn would provide a bit more security and protection for it.

Even if the pole barn was not insulated it would become a second option for sleeping bags over a presumably more comfy RV. Also, if there are ways to secure it well enough, or, we discover that theft is a non-issue then we might risk storing an RV and more expensive supplies there. Such choices can only be made on the margin as things unfold.

Security

Nothing is 100% secure if you’re not living there. Second best is a house sitting friend or renter. Third best is line of sight view and regular stop-by’s from a neighbor. When you’re off site store anything you can’t afford to lose in public storage.

Put a Web Cam on it?

You’ll need electricity, satellite-only internet and a dedicated (Cheap) computer for this option. For the trouble you’ll get four to eight cameras monitoring your site. It’s not foolproof but it could make your eyes the first eyes to see anything suspicious. Call your neighbor and ask them to check it out.

Retreat

With all the excitement of working on your house in the country don’t forget it gives your family the added benefit of a retreat location should you ever need to leave your current home. Every improvement makes it that much more comfortable for you family in times of retreat. One need only browse recent headlines to become a fan of having some geographical diversity in your housing plan.

Income

What if you could build something that would provide a source of income?

If a moblie home were in the right location and had electricity and water then it could possibly be rented out. Nowadays that may require having cable and internet installed, as well.

A Tiny House

A second possibility is to stay in your mobile home or RV while building a Tiny House on Ground or a Small Guest Cottage. Once built you’d no longer have an issue providing a comfortable place to stay for your family. Depending on location you might even be able to rent it out to someone who could keep an eye on the place for you between builds.

Two is One

If you can rent out a mobile home or cottage then why not have two (Or one of each)? One for a renter and the other for you.

Building two enables leveraging of design, materials, labor and knowledge into a second identical structure. Rent one and stay in the other. If one isn’t rented then all the more options for family and guests. Even if you build one tiny house or cottage and don’t rent it you could then get rid of the RV or supplement the cottage with the RV.

Either way it will be much easier to get your family to stay longer!

Electricity

Speaking of Building it Backwards the smallest and last provision for electricity will be the first one on the back of my truck: A generator.

Bringing electricity to rural land is expensive. Even if your land already has an electrical drop the expense was built-in to your purchase price meaning you would have been able to purchase more land if it wasn’t. Whether you value more land or less with electricity is up to you. I’m a bit torn on the issue and will face it as we zero-in on our exact land choice.

My overall opinion is that electricity is the easiest utility to do without or provide by self-sufficient means. Since our goal is to provide at least some of the latter I’m not sure how much I’m willing to pay for the former.

Water

Water is life and mandatory. It’s so crucial to rural land it makes for a go/no-go buying decision. If you’re lucky enough to have a stream running through your land then you have a huge jumpstart! You’ll still have to setup pumps, plumbing lines, sewer and leach field, but, drinking water is only a two-stage gravity filter away.

Everyone else has to either drill a well and hope for the best or haul water in. If drilling a well is mandatory it’s too big a risk to not have an idea of whether you’ll be successful or how much money to set aside for the expense.

Cell Phone Coverage

Will you have to drive to get a signal on your cell phone? That could be a time and money losing proposition. Satellite has too much latency for any VOIP functionality you may be counting on. Best check on this, in advance.

Structure vs. Strategy

Structure order is only part of build strategy. You may know what to build and still get stuck on strategy. Since we’re building remotely I’ve been thinking through the various options. Here’s some thoughts off the cuff in the spirit of sparking a jumpstart or an idea to break the logjam of the theoretical.

As discussed previously, unless your paying someone else to build you’re going to need tools, supplies, a place to store them and a place to stay while you’re building. While large industrial one-use tools are best rented general tools and equipment are best owned for long term use.

Store all tools and supplies underground on-site.
Store all tools and supplies in an on-site Shed.
Build an on-site shed supplemented with small public storage rental.
Keep RV onsite or in local public storage and pick it up when visiting property.
Rent and return a separate RV trailer for each building session.
Keep RV on a friends property and pick it up when visiting property.
Build a pole barn on-site large enough for supplies, tools and to store RV inside.
Put a wood stove in the Pole Barn (Properly vented and with CO2 detectors all around) to heat.

We live a considerable distance away from our potential building site. That means any RV must be stored or rented locally even if we own it. I’ll be driving the truck to the site and it’s not worth the extra gas to haul an RV back and forth. The gas savings alone would pay for the RV or its local rental.

When in Doubt

The more clear and definite your vision the less time you’ll waste. The best use of your time is spent building structures that fit into your overall site plan. You would have built them anyway and just decided to build them first because of their superior marginal utility.

If you’re stuck on what to build first then there are three ways to go.

Build the Smaller Thing

Let’s face it, building something useful that you would be proud to have on your land is always a bit more difficult than you first imagine. Maybe what you have in mind is too ambitious. Take it down a notch or two. Instead of building a pole barn build a shed. Instead of a shed build a metal canopy. Instead of a canopy a Bear Grylles lean-to to take the edge off the wind for overnight camping.

Cut to the Chase

If you know a larger pole barn will obviate the need for a shed, smaller barn or serve as a workshop (And maybe even store an RV) and you have the means then the optimal use of your time is to build it first. Such a barn is a considerable project though much less than a home. The useful structures you build before your home may still, in themselves, be considerable projects. But, they still bestow the benefits of building it backwards.

Temporary Stuctures

Anyone who’s hauled a port-a-potty or scaffolding onto a building site knows that temporary structures can be the Optimal next choice. If a temporary structure has that much use, and you’ve got the money and time, then build it.

Build It Backwards Advantages

The idea of building it backwards can be implemented in an infinite number of ways. Limiting the focus to my family’s personal goals the approach has the following advantages over a more traditional strategy:

Gets you thinking of ways to use of your land, immediately.
Gets your land ‘producing’ at the beginning of the building process rather than at the end.
No debt. Purchasing the land and building slowly is a form of self-financing that keeps you from having to take a loan.
Flexibility. As circumstances change and money comes and goes you can make optimal choices on the margin about the timing, cost and usefulness of the next step.
Working harder now to build a second house will enables renting your current house in the future for retirement income.
You get to design and build exactly what you want, where you want it, and when you’re ready to build it.
Motivates site planning from the beginning which saves time, money and effort.
Provides a place to live on your property whenever you decide to be there.

Provides a place to live while working on or building the next phase of your country home.
May provide a place to rent for income or on-site security.
Starts momentum. Once you’ve built something useful the chances of adding further improvements rises exponentially.
Your improvements to the property for tax purposes will be minimal. By the time it amounts to something you’ll be getting maximum value from the land.

The most useful things built on land are built last. Reverse that convention and build it backwards. Small structures provide big comfort and improvements relative to their size and cost. Return on investment is high because investment is small and return is relative to the nothing of the vacant land your starting with.

Get the most important uses out of your land first, and soon. Doing so may rescue this widely held and rarely realized dream from the never-to-be-crossed-out section of your bucket list.

Freedom

One Nation, Under Surveillance

By Terence Gillespie September 10, 2014

Book Review by Terence Gillespie

“Privacy is an insurance policy against oppression. Privacy allows a tyrannized citizenry to think independently, freely and clearly.”

– Boston T. Party

Such is the clear and historical perspective of Boston’s new privacy book, One Nation, Under Surveillance — Privacy From the Watchful Eye. In this most up-to-date and comprehensive book on the subject the author accomplishes three feats for those of us interested in state-of-the-art privacy:

A complete analysis of why privacy is more crucial than ever, still possible and still works!
A detailed description of who and what to protect our privacy against.
An exhaustive and up-to-date implementation guide for achieving our own “sweet spot” of insulation.

In fact, Boston intentionally overdid his own privacy to learn how far it can be taken before it begins to work against you. This makes him one of the few Americans that can give first hand knowledge of the true costs, details and tradeoffs to balance in putting together our own plan.

Those familiar with the subject know that privacy cascades into multiple areas and down many rabbit trails of implementation. Because of its completeness and the inclusion of the three elements above it’s quite possible to implement a complete privacy plan using only this 480-page book as a companion.

More Crucial Than Ever (And Still Works!)

“Too many wrongly characterize the debate as ‘security versus privacy.’ The real choice is liberty versus control. . . . . that’s why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.”

– Bruce Schneier, “The Eternal Value of Privacy”

If you thought the battle for privacy was over after watching “Enemy of the State” Boston would ask why everyone still wants your data with every transaction or activity. The authors’ short answer to that question is that privacy still works!

If you’ve got black helicopters over your shoulder your cover is blown. However, using the same movie reference how much more peaceful would our lives be if everyone had 80% of the cover of Gene Hackman’s character?

The author would advise not turning yourself into a paranoid hermit obsessed to the point of having no life to protect. His suggestion is to commit to 20% of the full effort to achieve 80% of the results. In the authors’ experience going for 100% privacy consumes too much time, joy and money diminishing the quality of the life you’re protecting.

Keeping Your Nose Clean is Not a Plan

‘Doing nothing wrong and keeping your nose clean’ is normal rational behavior; it is not a privacy plan.

Viewed as a ‘privacy plan’ here’s the hard truth about ‘keeping your nose clean’: It might have worked in 1910, it was naive 30 years ago and it’s hazardous to your health, wealth and peace of mind, today.

As Boston describes, “What we are facing is, in effect, an environmental issue regarding tyranny’s pervasiveness. It’s as though the toxic gas of oppression is everywhere.” Going on to say “I may be wrong, but I don’t think that this force can any longer be fought and won on a national scale. Any inroads made there will evaporate after the next disaster or emergency or attack.”

The Data Beast

For an inside look at how hungry our state rats are over ‘public’ data aggregation see Catherine Austin-Fitts’ six-part series, The Data Beast. It’s a rare inside perspective on how important your live data is to those who pretend they already have it.

In benevolent hands accurate data is the beginning of discovery and optimizing the delivery of value. In evil hands it’s the most crucial element for manipulating the truth.

The State is selling an agenda not discovering a truth. The agenda is decided prior to data collection. Information that doesn’t support the agenda, although coveted within the agency, is squashed or denied publicly.

Climategate, Pandemics, the unemployment rate, the HUD scandal, the inflation rate, etc. . . . . The official story has nothing to do with the truth.

Beware of hungry data beasts masquerading as public servants.

The Cops and the Mail

Why does the average law-abiding heart race when seeing a cop or receiving a piece of mail from the state? Gee whiz, if you’ve done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, then . . . blah, blah, blah.

Perhaps because the last guy “protected and served” owes $1500 or was “served” into the emergency room. Or, maybe you’re still paying the fine or tax levied on ‘no services rendered’ or violating some conjured up prohibition. If your news hasn’t covered such unpleasantries Will Grigg has expertly chronicled the increasing steady stream of such incidents. It’s especially alarming that police brutality is on the rise at a time when the police are in less danger of being killed in the line of duty than ever before.

The architects of our depression are hungry to fund their next crisis. With a broad legislative brush anyone can be painted guilty of something or other. This creates the target rich environment necessary for profitable selective enforcement.

I’m a generation behind the boomers, but, you guys better watch out: Your upcoming social security and medicare costs are a big liability to a hungry, broke and desperate state wolf. Maybe the timing of this universal health non-care ruse is no coincidence?

Let’s face it: We’re nervous when we see the cops or get state mail because these guys are either desperate for money or psychopaths that need to control us as part of their therapy.

Getting Back to Normal

Most of the modern day battle for privacy involves reclaiming information that, not long ago, could not be tracked or didn’t even exist!

In 1910 there was no:

Social Security number to give
Business income to track
Income taxes to pay
Phone number to hide
Credit card to track activity
Computer, Database, e-mail, internet
Barcode to track shopping habits
Gun registration
DNA testing

And yet we had a higher quality of life than the world had ever seen.

We need to shed this notion that personal information is the price of better service. We’re not being served by its disclosure. We’re being numbered, branded, looted, sheered, taxed and vaccinated into a stupor.

We’re living in an age of laws so numerous and incomprehensible that enforcement can be focused on anyone ripe enough to harvest. Selective enforcement is a matter of revenue generation per the mood or balance sheet of the tax feeding agency.

There’s no shame in getting back to normal private behavior. The only shame is in what we’ve already given up.

Know Thine Enemy

“As long as you do not mistake a sociopath for a person of character, your privacy is generally safe from those whom you rightfully consider your friends.”

– Boston T. Party

One of the unique aspects of Boston’s latest privacy book is his crystal clear description of the enemy: The Psychopathic (Or sociopathic¹) 4% of the population and the organizations they’ve infested.

“A sociopath is somebody who, through a combination of heritable condition, genetic predisposition and upbringing, has no sense of interconnectedness (bonding) with living beings and thus no foundation for an active conscience (Like the 96% rest of us who do have one). Studies indicate that sociopathy involves an altered processing of emotional stimuli at the level of the cerebral cortex, and thus sociopaths simply cannot process emotional experience, such as love and caring.” Chapter 6, pg. 11.

The author provides an extensive list of character flaws and behaviors to enable recognition of the psychopaths among us. A abbreviated list for the purposes of this article would be:

Grandiosity
Shameless lies
Unreliability
Lack of empathy
Flair for manipulation
Scheme further ahead than moral people can anticipate
Audio/video record their victims much more often than vice versa
Make Plans for Justice Backfire
See sudden adversity as a challenge; they thrive on it
Always act behind the scenes, which is difficult to discern
Masters of manipulation through compartmentalization

Recognition of psychopaths is difficult for normal people. We tend to project our own innate goodness onto strangers and find ways to forgive their endless transgressions until its too late. By the time we recognize them, or dare to call them out, they’ve either damaged us or teamed up.

(To improve your recognition skills you can see one under a self-imposed microscope in the documentary film,”I, Psychopath“).

Apparently, these mutants recognize one another and tend to team up to take control of powerful organizations. “Psychopaths have this dream that they would like to govern. ‘We want to be the government,’ they think, and this dream is realized from time to time in the human history and this is a gruesome time.”²

“In the case of work, a psychopath may feel envious of another’s position and prestige, but will not actually work to achieve that position. Instead he will brutally manipulate and exploit the work of others in order to achieve domination. Hare and Babiak describe this phenomenon in their book, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work.”²

The enemy is most likely to present in one of five entities:

Individuals who make their way into your personal life.
Gangs, the leader of which is likely to be fully psychopathic (Ralphie, if not Tony in the Sopranos).
Organizations who, despite their benevolent banner, have been infiltrated to the point that their internal controls are largely psychopathic (SEIU, Climate Change Orgs, in some cases local police).
Individual members of the state exerting direct psychopathic influence on policy.
Any combination of the above who exert psychopathic control of state apparatus through indirect means (Enter our beloved illuminati and their NWO).

To all of these entities we (Normal, productive, law-abiding and rational human beings) are just one thing: Supply.

Once you realize who the enemy is privacy takes on the same urgency as your desire to continue living a moral and rational life. Without insulation we are in a constant state of derailment with a severe lack of freedom in making optimal choices.

“A right-thinking man – with puppet strings attached – cannot be a right-doing man.” (ch. 22, pg 20)

Batten Down these Hatches

The following outline was gleaned from the index of ONUS and provides a glimpse into the scope of implementing a complete privacy plan.

These are the elements of life most likely to cause exposure. Each element represents a privacy ‘hatch‘ to be batoned down in its own way. One of the major feats of the book; each element is addressed to the point that the reader could close the exposure, themselves. That would be an impressive feat in any one area, let alone all ten.

It would be possible to break out the computer sections and present them as a complete book on privacy in that area. Luckily, the author grants himself no such reprieve and we get it all in one book.

People
1. Friends
2. Family
3. Spouse
4. Children (Schooling)
5. Relatives
6. Business contacts
7. You
  1. Your mouth
  2. Your plan
  3. Your passport
  4. Your SSN
  5. Drivers License
  6. Other ID’s
Mail
1. Business
2. Personal
3. Vehicle Registrations
4. Sending
5. Receiving
Business
1. Asset Protection Entities
  1. Car
  2. Boat
  3. House
  4. Business entities
2. Contacts
3. Employees
4. Assets & Data
5. Offices
6. Income
  1. W2
  2. Corporate
  3. Barter
7. Insurance
Communication
1. Mouth
2. Phone
  1. Cell
  2. VOIP
  3. Voice Mail / FAX
  4. Landlines
3. E-mail
4. Internet
  1. Social Networking
  2. Forums
  3. Blogs
  4. Web browsing
Computer
1. Windows (A surveillance virus masquerading as an OS?)
2. MAC or Linux
3. Data Backup
4. Passphrases
5. Physical Security
Money
1. Credit?
2. Debit
3. Cash
4. Money Orders
5. Digital Gold
6. Gold & Silver Coins
7. Checks
8. Loans
9. 401K / IRA
Guns
1. Private Sales only
2. Minimal onsite
3. The Purchase
4. Ownership
5. Selling
6. Tracking
7. Storing
House
1. Address
2. Utilities
3. Census
Travel
1. Car
2. Hotel
3. Bus
4. Air
5. International
6. Border Crossings
Insurance
1. Life
2. Car
3. House
4. Health
5. Business

A complete plan would combine the private version of the elements, above, with behaviors that minimize exposure during interaction with untrusted people or entities.

Many life areas can and should be trimmed down and the author offers frequent tips on doing so. For instance, friends or relatives who can’t be trusted probably don’t belong in your life. And, trimming down business entities, employees, vehicles and office space leaves much less work in eliminating exposure to prying eyes.

In fact, it’s not easy to tell where Boston’s own well-researched techniques and experience blend with his accumulated knowledge of privacy. Hence, one of the author’s points: “Much of wisdom is using the hindsight of others as your foresight. . . . there is not enough time to learn the lesson from purely your own mistakes . . .”.

For those with the foresight to use ONUS over the next several years it’s an exhaustive and up-to-date implementation guide for achieving your own “sweet spot” of insulation. Beyond that, the universal principles outlined will have to be combined with your own improvisations as the data noose inevitably tightens in years to come.

The private lives we all have a right to will require a fight to reclaim.

Privacy Premiums

“To govern oneself is a natural imperative, and all tyranny is the miscarriage of self government. The first requisite of freedom is to accept responsibility for the lack of it.”

– E.C. Riegel, 1949

The Rules

Don’t draw attention to yourself
Privacy is complicated – think it through
Privacy is expensive – don’t be greedy
Privacy is inconvenient – don’t be lazy
Privacy is private – don’t be glib
Be consistent – be thorough
Work your story out in advance
Privacy requires your alertness

You Are Your Data

To most entities you are known only by your data. There is no personal relationship. Change your data and you’ve changed your ‘relationship’. Another way of putting it is that what happens to your data happens to you. Since we’re not talking about friends why not make the data version of yourself unavailable for:

Tracking and control
Subpoenas for bogus civil suits
Visits from stalkers
False arrest arising from bureaucratic screwups
Unlawful search and seizure
Forfeiture of personal possessions to agencies who are broke

Opportunity in Crisis

A move to another location is an excellent opportunity to reclaim lost privacy. The number of people leaving/losing their houses and renting provides good cover. With this book you could start tackling the problem in a big way during the move. What a great time to make privacy a part of your new life.

Never Take Candy from a Psychopath

Bargains with the devil always come with an incentive package. Turn them down:

Loans from strangers
Tax deductions that blow your privacy
Child tax deductions if you’ll just get baby a social security number (Fight this: No baby needs one. Even the boomers won’t get their booty)
Free medical tests or ‘screenings’ as an excuse to get your DNA into a database (All babies born in a hospital are now subject to this outrage).
10% off if you’ll just sign up for our in-store credit card

The candy offers go on and on. You’ll recognize them when you see them. Walk away. Consider the forgone ‘service’, discount or deduction to be a small cost of freedom.

A Little Goes A Long Way

Don’t get overwhelmed. Make privacy an extension of a normal civilized life. Change your mindset from within and calmly privatize one piece of life at a time.

Just a few pieces create a working bubble:

Keep business income discreet.
Never take candy from a psychopath (See list, above).
Pay with cash or prepaid debit card.
Keep computer and online activities private (Extensive tips on this in the book).
Keep phone activities secure (Extensive tips on this in the book).

Use the peace from this privacy to map out a plan for the rest.

“Privacy is like fire insurance; you can’t get it after you need it. You get it first, and then hope that it never becomes necessary. (ch. 2, pg. 2)

The ONUS is On Us

“We’re not what we believe. We’re what we’ll fight for.”

There’s going to be a scuffle or two when reclaiming lost privacy. And, there’s going to be cost and inconvenience in maintaining the insulation level you decide on. Slowly, but surely, however, the river of trivialities that derail life can be brought to a trickle.

Reading through the implementation part of the book it’s evident the author has become quite brilliant at improvising privacy solutions as new exposures present. I believe the most valuable contribution of the book is that it tends to impart such improvisational skills to the reader.

“Do not confront, but learn to mask yourself and circumvent.” (ch. 22, pg. 17)

My overall take on ONUS is that it’s so thorough, comprehensive and actionable on such a complex (And urgent) subject that it was a practical sacrificial effort to get it all current and in one book. Apparently, this parting gift of liberty is no accident as it’s the authors last “Boston T. Party” book.

It would be a shame not to have this privacy tool available now that it’s needed most. But, it is available. All the mistakes have been made, we know privacy is crucial and possible, we know what the enemy looks like and have a detailed roadmap to get to a safe place.

The only shame would be in not taking privacy and shelter from the psychopathic storm.

Try imagining a place where its always safe and warm

Come in she said I’ll give ya’ Shelter From The Storm, —B. Dylan

Privacy Reference

Optical illusions: autostereograms and sociopaths
Political Ponerology (A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes)
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work
Cracking the Code: The Fascinating Truth about Taxation in America
I, Psychopath
Yuri Bezmenov discusses the science of demoralization in America
Schneier.com

¹Psychopath and Sociopath are rough synonyms with pychopath implying inherited traits and sociopath leaving open the environment as a main contributing factor in causing the same behavior. The author uses the word sociopath perhaps to expand recognition of the traits to be present in seemingly normal everyday encounters, as they certainly are. I chose to use psychopath because the three friends I asked were better able to identify the word with the behavior.

²Interview with Andrzej M. Łobaczewski, author of Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes.

Business

Wealth Transfer around Collapsing Asset Prices

By Terence Gillespie September 10, 2014

The decimation of the middle class continues through 23% unemployment¹ and the daily evaporation of net worth. Those who remain employed are running to stand still taking up the slack of former, less fortunate, co-workers. Mortgage holders above water are the exception and many are cashing in what’s left of their 401k to meet expenses. The word retirement is fading into the dreams of yesteryear and will be a mere web-search term for children born after 2000.

There is a moral, peaceful and non-violent way to be on the receiving end of this slow-motion artificial wealth transfer. One of the keys is to understand . . .

Why Asset Prices Collapse

“Asset prices collapse during periods of hyperinflation when priced in gold.”²

When first reading that I wondered, “If assets are desirable and the currency is worthless then why would their price go down?” The answer is that prices rise in fiat and fall in gold. Why would prices fall when measured in gold? Current news headlines provide some answers:

Some assets were overpriced to begin with and are returning to normal.
Unemployment leaves people with less to spend causing less demand.
Those with income cut back, save more and buy less causing less demand.
Current housing inventory and projected foreclosures could meet demand for three years of sales. That figure is closer to four months in an efficient market.
Equites, when priced in gold, have lost enough real value to cause people to flee into safer investments.
Retirement plans are being liquidated to meet monthly expenses
Luxury items are being sold to meet monthly expenses.

If current trends continue #2, #3, #5, #6 and #7 will get worse. If the banksters checkmate themselves into an inflationary corner then they will get much worse.

Women, Computers and Volcker to the Rescue?

In the early 80’s America was rescued from runaway inflation by three things: A massive influx of women into the workforce, the personal computer and the temporarily sane monetary policy of Paul Volcker. Many women followed the pied piper of woman’s liberation but the piper’s agenda was to double the work-force tax base. The second rescue was the personal computer and the ensuing productivity boost it poured into the economy. From a monetary point of view the same amount of money was now circulating in an economy with more productive workers and twice as many of them. Once again, the American public and ingenious entrepreneurs saved the state from its incompetence. Mom is now gone from the house, working and replaced with daycare and using computers developed by private entrepreneurs. And yet, it’s Paul Volckers’ monetary policy that is purported to have rescued America.

Is there anything on the horizon that could rescue the economy, today, as women and computers did in the early 80’s? Cold fusion? Free energy from the sky? A quadrupling of workers or their productivity? I’m not sure. But, there are ways to rescue oneself and family in any circumstances if they are understood.

Inflation and What Else?

The US has done more to cause hyperinflation than any country that’s ever actually had it. And yet, the US continues to escape this well-earned fate. Instead, bubble after bubble is popped and the proceeds are put into the bags of the ones who create them. For those who care about macroeconomic measures the most reasonable short-term expectations are more of the same of the last decade:

Informal Devaluation
Stagflation
Continued Decline

Great, but it’s a waste of time to dote on things one has no control of. Instead, why not bone up on the usual ways wealth is transferred under these circumstances? The “Collapse” that everyone is expecting is occurring in slow motion. However, since it’s easier to see the trades if we pretend it will happen overnight I’ll refer to what I think will happen over many years as the “Collapse”, below.

Wealth Transfer around Collapsing Asset Prices

Vulture economics is wealth transfer from weak to strong, emotional to rational, unprepared to prepared, city dweller to farmer, productive to unproductive, Keynesian to Austrian, and from the manipulated to manipulator. In a crisis the unprepared and wealthy (In fiat only) will sell anything to meet basic needs. In Weimar, well-to-do city dwellers came out to the countryside to exchange cigars for meat, pianos for wheat flour and gold watches for potatos.³ In essence, they traded Diamonds for Water.

Prior to Collapse

In a trade of Diamonds for Water the guy with the water gets both and the guy with the diamonds gets some water before losing both.

The general pre-collapse roadmap is to:

Think like a foreigner in your own country.
Move towards employment and safety.
Postpone the purchase (And sell excess) of future collapsing assets.
Don’t payoff your house. Make the minimum payments on all mortgages and large fixed debts.
Purchase real money and wealth storing assets.
Stock up on the life essentials while they’re available and cheap.
Invest in the factors of your own production.
Warn who you can without causing resentment.
Make a shopping list for the eye of the storm.

My Optimal choices are laid out in Your Optimal Bailout Plan, Depression Proof Your Money, Checklist for Hard Times and 240 Jobs That Won’t Disappear in an Economic Crisis. Essentially, you sell assets whose price will collapse (Further) and buy the staples of life while they’re available and cheap. Later you buy the “diamonds” by preserving the purchasing power of your savings and not relying on anyone to provide life essentials for your family. If hyperinflation occurs pay off your mortgage with an egg. If it doesn’t use silver and inflation to pay off your house.

Foreigner in Your Own Country

You hear it all the time: Those ‘foreigners’ come over here with suitcases and buy everything in sight because the Euro/Yen/Yuan/Franc is strong. The opposite used to be the norm: Americans traveling everywhere for $10 a day on world wide shopping sprees.

Gold is the best money in the world and enables easy conversion to every form of cash. If your idea of cash is limited to government issued fiat then at least hold a stable one. They’re all based on nothing but Swiss Francs and Canadian dollars will faire better than the dollar. See How To Buy Swiss Francs in 5 Minutes or Less.

Today, you can swap in and out of any currency in the world with the click of a button. There’s nothing to prevent swapping into the strongest fiat of the moment. It’s well known that during the currency crisis’ of Chile and Argentina the first people to exchange local fiat for US dollars were among the few to keep their savings from disappearing into smoke. Those who bought dollars prior to the official devaluations and newly issued local currency were saved. Soon it will be even more ironic that the widespread use of US dollars provided the stability needed for these countries to transition into a new fiat currency based on ten times the nothing of the first one that collapsed.

Or, you can “play it safe” and keep your “money” in the bank. You’ll be able to retain and spend every cent as it’s being devalued.

Field Trip

Take $500 to the bank and tell them you’re going on a trip to Switzerland and would like to purchase Swiss Francs. Take the Swiss Francs and put them in your pocket and let the feeling of having cash wash over you. If you ever need emergency cash convert them back and you’ll probably get more dollars than you started with.

Factors of Your Production

The best investment is in the factors of your own production: Health, education, training, building a strong network and community. If there’s no market for your specialty consider moving and/or directly producing what your family needs. Create a water rain catch system, grow your own food, make your on electricity, etc..

“Before you hunker down get out of the way”⁴

Many people are newly unemployed. Though beyond the scope of this article to explore would moving be a better use of your time than scanning the want ads? Would a move within the US, or to another country, be the best start of a new business or profession?

Wealth Storage

The TRJ/CRB is a benchmark representation of commodities as an asset class. These commodities are not the only place to store wealth but they do represent assets with well established markets.

Aluminum
Cocoa
Coffee
Copper
Corn
Cotton
Crude Oil
Gold
Heating Oil
Lean Hogs
Live Cattle
Natural Gas
Nickel
Orange Juice
Silver
Soybeans
Sugar
Unleaded Gas
Wheat

Most of these have indexes for those who trust brokerage accounts. At least 10 of them, however, could be personally purchased and stored. Notice this list is in the Before Collapse section of the article.

Collapsing Assets

All of the following assets are collapsing and will continue to collapse relative to gold. Don’t be fooled by nominal price increases in fiat. Sell them now, if you can.

The US Dollar
Municipal Bonds
US Treasuries
High Multiple (P/E) Stocks
Financial Stocks
Equities in consumer discretionaries
Grand Pianos
Diamonds
Luxury cars
Yachts
Jewelry
Rental Houses
Designer Watches
Designer Handbags
Recreational (Only) Property
Luxury (Empty) Apartments
Overpriced Wine

Signals to Look For

The Mainstream Media does not report real news so you’ll have to glean the timing of the worst part of the collapse from alternative media or inductive reasoning applied to personal observations. The short list would be:

Witnessing a diamonds for water trade.
A precipitous rise in gold or silver.
Stock market collapse or close.
Sharp increase in the rate of failing banks.
Social unrest, heated protests or riots.
Bank holiday followed by formal devaluation.

We had family members stay with us, last Christmas, from Venezuela. The week after they returned home Chavez devaluated the Bolivar by 40% for non-food and medicine imports causing panicked shoppers to flood the stores to beat overnight price increases. A devaluation of 40-50% seems to be the norm. States may fear social unrest if taking more than 50% of people’s money overnight.

During Collapse

Trade gold, silver or other wealth storing assets for assets whose price has collapsed, but, still represent good underlying value.
Stay out of the way of those competing for food, water and essentials.
Help whatever family and friends you can.
Pay off your mortgage and all fixed debts denominated in the collapsing currency.
Buy houses, land or whatever real estate you can use and manage.
Buy equities of companies unlikely to be nationalized (If there are any) and who produce things needed to rebuild.
Go bargain hunting with whatever you have left.

Shopping List

Real Estate
Farm equipment
Fertilizers
Agricultural commodities
Energy producers
Mining companies
Oil producers
Energy
Forestry
Manufacturing
Mining
Transportation
Utilities
Water

Real estate now shifts to a good buy as people dump it for essentials or to escape. You may have sold luxury condos and vacant rental houses prior to the collapse. Now is your chance to get them back … if you want ’em.

Gold Cost Average the Purchase of Real Estate

You can do it with stocks so why not with real estate?

It’s the same principle, just harder to imagine because real estate is rarely cheap enough to allow it. Instead of lamenting the nominal price drop of your house buy two or three more during the collapse. When things return to normal it will more than make up for what you overpaid in the housing bubble. By this time you may have already paid off your house with silver because the mortgage is denominated in fiat and you’ve got real money.

When sanity returns you will have saved yourself from being one of those guys you meet who got burned in Peru, Chile or Argentina and are still bitter over never having recovered from the collapse.

After the Collapse

Welcome to the latest third world country. Your neighborhood is starting to resemble the pictures from your last trip to Mexico. The middle class is gone or fled, labor is cheap, imported goods are expensive and the local goods get exported to countries that can afford them. Infrastructure disintegrates for lack of money and power outages are a way of life.

Try to look on the bright side: Markets have been cleared of toxic debt, derivatives have disappeared, entitlement programs have been cut or renegotiated and policy makers have learned their lesson!? Or is that being too optimistic?

Well, at least labor is cheap and you can afford a nanny for each child if that’s your style. And massages, spa treatments, manicures and dinner out will be as affordable as they were on that last trip to the Belize!

Don’t Be a Vulture

The problem with eating raw flesh and blood is that it’s not good for you. Vulture economics requires stomach bacteria for digesting flesh without remorse. You’re not a genius to be in a temporary position of strength with your fellow man. But, you have a chance to act like one for recognizing him as such. This is your moment to shine by using strength in an exemplary manner. The golden rule remains golden. Will you?

If someone offers diamonds for water give them water and let them keep their “precious” diamonds. Use the chaos to invest in assets and people who are going to improve lives. If anyone’s going to be left with capital to rebuild why shouldn’t it be the good guys?

“For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.”

– Matthew 25:29

¹Shadowstats, September 9th, 2014

²In Peter Schiff’s 2007 edition of Crashproof

³When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse

by ADAM FERGUSSON.

⁴Peter Schiff, “The Little Book Of Bull Moves in a Bear Market”

Business

So You Wanna be a Pawn Star?

By Terence Gillespie September 8, 2014

Pawn Shops were the largest source of consumer credit until 1964 before the flood of institutional credit.

Pawnbrokers have been around since ancient times and even kicked out of the Temple by Jesus for getting greedy on half-shekel premiums. Whether or not they’ve recovered from the incident is your call. But, one thing is for sure: Pawn brokers are filling the huge credit vacuum left by banks who have trillions in reserves but not a penny to lend. Unlike banks, the money a pawnbroker lends is based on real goods — first yours, then theirs.

After a Tivo marathon of Pawn Stars I’d seen Rick, Corey and the Old Man go through their process 50 times or so. Then, the was the last straw. Why does Rick let customers see his expert appraisals?!

A guy comes into the shop hoping his cuckoo clock may be worth something, but, has no idea. Rick thinks it’s original and calls an expert. By the time the expert is done blabbing in front of the customer a deal is struck for $4,200. Whuh? That guy would have been thrilled to get $500 bucks. Rick paid $3700 more than he had to! What’s going on here? This is terrible business . . . unless. . . you have a TV show. Then, it’s marketing genius!

Of course, cheating or abusing customers is not only wrong, but, the quickest way to lose a legitimate business. But, when it comes to the business of pawn shops . . .

Appraisals are the Heart

Modern pawn shops offer lots of services. None of them work without the shops ability to appraise the value of the goods their services revolve around. The History channel describes the Old Man as “The Appraiser” for good reason.

The ability to glean the value of a wide range of items makes or breaks a pawn shop. The quality of the appraisal, and negotiated price, determine the maximum profit potential for each item. Jabbering everything you know about an item puts the customer on an equal footing with the business. In fact, it provides a free service to the customer outside the scope of the pawn business. Pawn customers need money or a loan. If they need an expert appraisal then either . . .

Charge for Appraisals

Or don’t provide them. If you have to bring in an expert then charge a flat fee plus whatever the expert charges you (And have an agreement with the expert that you get first dibs). If the item is not worth an appraisal fee then the customer won’t purchase one.

So, why does Rick give away the heart of his business to folks who just need a few bucks to pay the rent? He doesn’t. The Pawn Stars are savvy businessmen using . . .

Appraisals as Marketing

You gotta love these guys. They take a $3700 loss on an item while demonstrating their expertise to TV viewers across the country. In other words, the ‘loss’ they take in front of the TV cameras is the cheapest marketing you could buy. What other pawn shops get 1000 customers a day and are doubling their store space?

Rick is talking to the TV cameras to demonstrate his shop’s expertise. He’s giving up some of the profit on each item pawned in exchange for marketing his business all over the country. And it’s working, fabulously! While I’m questioning their appraisal process these guys are marketing them all the way to the bank!

In one episode, Corey and Chum Lee are cleaning up the storage room and discover a statue that’s off pawn and should have been put up for sale. The item was a statue that Rick estimated could be sold for $2000. The Old Man comes in and recognizes the statue as one of his ‘buys’ for which he paid $200. I guess the TV cameras weren’t on for that one and the Old Man didn’t blab what he knew the statue to be worth. That’s the pawn business. The customer was happy enough with $200 to make the trade or he wouldn’t have sold it.

These guys are no dummies. Rick, The Old Man, Big Hoss, and even Chum Lee (For video games) are expert appraisers in their own areas.

Gold & Silver, The Blood

If Appraisals are the heart of the pawn business then gold and silver are the blood.

Watch the show closely and you’ll hear the Pawn Stars answer the phone with the greeting “Gold & Silver?”. That’s because the name of the shop is Gold & Silver Pawnshop. The “Old Man” is often seen counting money at his desk surrounded by silver bars. And notice the amount of silverware, superbowl rings and jewelry in the display cases in the background.

Antique guns, helicopters, cuckoo clocks and pinball machines are great fun! But, make no mistake: Their purpose is to draw attention to a business providing credit or reselling the equity in real things. More often than not those real things are gold & silver.

Few pawn items have the benefit of an international exchange to set price. That takes much of the risk out of appraising the real value of an item made with precious metals. Sure, the price changes every second, but, so does the price of everything if there was a ticker tape to broadcast it.

From a business vetting standpoint the gold & silver aspects of the pawn business are something that should interest you, or you’d be happy to learn more about. Pawnbrokers require a second hand dealers license (same as precious metals license) or a pawnbrokers license to buy and sell gold and silver. In Florida, the scales used to weigh gold are regulated by the department of agriculture, which is ridiculous.

Inside Scoop

When selling jewelry or odd lots of gold or silver to a pawn shop bring a nickel with you. It should weigh exactly 5 grams. If it weighs less, or, the pawnbroker doesn’t weigh your item, at all, then find another shop. So much for the department of agriculture.

Sell or Pawn?

Judging by Pawn Stars you’d think the business was 98% sales and 2% pawn. It’s actually 40% sales and 60% pawn (According to one of the fun facts between commercials). One episode showed they had almost 4000 items in the back of the shop!

Anyone contemplating the pawn business should be good with managing thousands of inventory items. And police require reporting, on a daily basis, of everything that’s purchased. Another tracking hassle is that no item may be sold until it sits in the ‘buy room‘ for 30 days and checked for theft. 30 days can make or break the sale of an ipod should a new generation come out making the old one obsolete.

From the customers point of view it’s either sell your item for a fraction of its value or take out a loan based on a fraction of its value. The customer will talk up the value of their item and convince the broker he wants the item back. That’s to persuade the broker that he’ll be paying the interest and will pay back the principal of the loan.

From the brokers point of view he has to accept the risk of not being able to sell the item or the risk of the customer not making loan payments. Either way, he’ll be left with the item. It’s his job to make sure he can resell the item for a profit if the customer doesn’t pay back the loan.

In Florida, the maximum interest allowed is 25% per month. If you come back in two weeks you may negotiate an extension on your 30-day loan. If you don’t pick it up after 30 days, or whenever you extended the loan to, you have a 30-day grace period (At the same interest rate). If you don’t pick it up it becomes property of the pawn shop on day 61.

Inside Scoop

The pawn broker doesn’t want your motorcycle helmet or guitar. He’s got lot’s of them in the back. What he wants is for you to make the interest payment, pay back the loan and pick up your item. Of course, he’s loaned you an amount that he can still profit on if he sells your item. But, unless it’s an exceptional item, the interest payment is what he wants. Even better, if you get the item back you’ll have it for another pawn and interest generating loan, later.

If you have a good track record of paying the interest and getting your item back there will be room to negotiate a higher price on the next item you pawn.

Competition

The competition for pawn shops are:

Garage sales
Word of mouth
Newspaper
Ebay
Craigslist
Flyers at the market
Bargain trader
Loan from Friends & Family using the item as collateral

If you’ve got time, and no money, then a little sales work puts the money into your pocket. If not, then the pawnbroker does the work and you get less money.

Most items have less value to others than to us as personal possessions. Whether you discover the objective value, yourself, or hear the adjusted value from the pawnbroker (After building in his profit) there’s no sense in blaming the messenger. It’s unlikely you’ll hear the pawnbrokers true appraisal for a valuable item, even if he knows it. Pawn shops are not the Antiques Road Show you’d expect by watching the Pawn Stars.

There’s nothing wrong with needing a bridge loan, now and then. But, pawning will cost you 25% of the loan amount on a monthly basis. The loan amount does not equal the full value of the item because that would leave no room for the pawn broker to profit from the items sale if you default. But, you’ll be chipping away at the value of the item at an alarming rate. That’s the nature of the pawn business.

Some customers interviewed after their Pawn Stars deal say they’ll just sell on ebay. That’s the right thing to do if you’ve got the time. But, there is something to be said for a trip to the pawn shop, talking with real people and quick money to pay the rent.

Restoring Disasters

One of the unique aspects of the Pawn Stars are their restorations. They buy disasters and restore them to original, sometimes better, condition. Rick has a rolodex of restorers that perform these miracles.

In one episode Rick buys a 1992 Schweizer helicopter for $10K. The thing was in pieces after a crashed landing. Although his expert quotes a price of $100k for the restoration he says it would then sell for $150k. Eventually, Rick gets the Old Man to agree to the restoration which turns out to be a stunning achievement. The episode ends with the Old Man taking off from North Vegas with a smile on his face and the aviation expert saying they could probably get $160k for it.

Great TV.

These restorations are wonderful and have the most profit potential of any part of Rick’s business. However, there’s one aspect to take into consideration that’s not mentioned on the show. If you were looking to buy the helicopter in question would you prefer one that had been restored from a crash or had never crashed?

If you’d prefer the one that had never crashed then:

You’d want to pay less for the restored helicopter.
The restored helicopter. would have to be in better shape than the non-crashed version.

The resale prices on the show are overstated. What the experts say its worth and what it actually sells for are two different things. But, hey, it’s great TV, either way.

Creating the Market

In many cases, this is irrelevant because there’s no market, whatsoever, for the non-restored version. In one episode Rick restores a 1930’s gas pump into a thing of glory. There was no market, at all, for the non restored version other than Rick, himself. The restoration created the market.

Now THAT’S good business!

Pawn for Hard Times?

Vetting a business you’ll be running yourself is more than learning the facts. It’s making decisions about the opportunity cost of not running any other business during this period of your life. To assist my wife in the vetting process I created a business vetting mindmap as a way of describing how to Vett Any Business Idea in 10 Minutes. It’s free and may it assist in discovering Your Optimal Buisiness.

Pawn Broker Characteristics

Pawn brokers seem to:

Have a talent for appraising value. Part of that is knowing when to call in an expert.
Have a collectors’ mentality and eclectic interests.
Be willing and competent to deal with items for which they have no interest.
Understand value and money and the difference between them.
Be willing to buy, fix up and sell.
Be comfortable negotiating price and loan terms.
Be tactful and firm with customers who disagree.
Be comfortable in a cluttered environment.
Be able to manage inventory.
Be organized enough to adhere to all the regulations and compliance that surround the business.

You’ll want to already have many of these characteristics, not just be willing to acquire them because ‘pawning is big, right now’.

Price of Admission

Pawning is highly regulated. Varying by state, you’ll need to obtain or have a:

Banking and lending license.
Second hand dealers license (Or Precious metals license)
Pawnbrokers license
FFL if you’re buying/selling guns.
Large positive net worth.

You’ll be subject to extensive criminal background checks to obtain the licenses, above. And a large positive net worth is required to fund the beginning inventory of gold and silver. Pawn brokers give loans, they don’t get them.

Security

For this pure cash business security is a major concern complicated by customers needing close up access to gold and silver items. On one episode, Cory refers to the number of employees working at the shop and it was more than I expected. I’ll bet some of those folks are needed for extra security.

Related Possibilities

No need to be the owner. You could also be:

An employee.
A consultant appraiser in the area of your expertise.
A restorer.

Pawn Shop +

If pawn shops become the new hub for consumer credit then why not make it a fun gathering place? Rent Movies, Instruments, serve coffee, provide web access, whatever.

I hesitate to recommend Check Cashing, Payroll Loans and Car Title Loans because they have a reputation for taking advantage of people when they’re down. If you can provide these services, fairly, then they wouldn’t require any more infrastructure or regulatory hoops than you’ve already taken on for your pawn business.

Also, a pawn shop could have a coin shop, and vice versa. Pawn & Coin or Coins & Pawn is a natural combination.

Beauty’s in the Eye of the Gold

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but, all you have time for is the gold. If you add coin shop services then deal in bullion only. If people bring in collectible coins give them a fair offer on the bullion content only. They’ll get the picture and you’ll bypass the hassles and risks of collectible coins.

Parting Facts & Words

Pawning is a multi billion dollar business with some 125,000 shops in US and several traded public companies.
The National Pawnbrokers Association says the average loan is $80 and that most customers are employed.
Customers tend to be primarily men, homeowners around 35 years of age that need quick money because they have no line of credit.
Not all pawn shops sell guns due to the additional burdens of the FFL license and paperwork required.

Pawn shops are getting busy partly due to the TV show and mostly because people need them to supply credit. Banks aren’t lending, credit cards are maxed out and millions are out of work for the foreseeable future.

If you’ve exhausted your options (See competition section above) and can save bank fees, eviction, payroll or getting the heat shut off then, by all means, at least pawn shop loans are based on real goods.

For those vetting the pawn business, however, more customers don’t necessarily mean more profit. If new pawn customers default on their loans it leaves behind a pile of stuff. If nobody wants, or can afford, that stuff then the pawn shop just becomes a huge repository of unsaleable junk.

That’s not the kind of bubble you’ll need to be a Pawn Star.

Admin

Using Contacts to Manage Objects & Vendors

By Terence Gillespie September 5, 2014

Contacts can be used for much more than storing phone numbers and addresses. I make a new contact for every object, thing or vendor that needs to be tracked or managed. Camera’s, phones, kitchen appliances, software, computers, A/C Units, subscriptions, vendors, utilities . . .you name it. Simply keeping a little information on each item in the notes section of a contact makes a huge difference when action involving the object is required.

Naturally, there’s a folder in the filing cabinet for most things and vendors. But, 99% of the time all I need to pay a bill, upgrade software, fix the A/C, renew a subscription, cancel a service, etc. is contained in the contact notes. And, since contacts are synced everywhere I can access them from anywhere enabling me to take action from wherever I happen to be.

When it comes time to sell, ask for help or turnover over the management of an item the contact has all the relevant details. A quick read brings anyone up to date.

Why the Notes Section?

I tried using other fields, but, it made it too complicated to share between people and applications. Now, the only standard contact fields I use are Name, Address, Phone #s, Email, Web address, Company and Title. Everything else is input in the free form notes section of the contact.

Most Objects Have Vendors

Surprisingly, almost every object or thing is associated with a vendor. Therefore, I found that all the fields needed to track vendors can be used to track almost any object, as well.

My Template or Roll Your Own

Through experience I’ve discovered there’s about 35 things I may need to know about an object to perform most tasks that involves it. In practice, only 10-15 of these are needed for any given item although I keep the rest in to help my eye locate fields, quickly.

When a new contact is created I cut/paste the 35 fields (See below) into the notes section and fill out the ones applicable to the item. Feel free to use my template, roll your own or even keep it free form. The idea is to keep everything you need to know about an item to perform work about it, at your fingertips.

Powerful Benefits

Synced Everywhere – Contacts (And Calendars) in most software are the most likely to be synced across the web, multiple computers and your phone. Data stored in one of these structures is usually available everywhere you are. You probably won’t need to purchase new software.
Enables Action – Most actions revolve around objects, things and vendors. Having the details at your fingertips for everything in your life eliminates the prime reason for not taking action: Having to find supporting materials.
Enables Delegation – I used to avoid asking for help to avoid having to list the 20 things people need to know to perform the action I needed help with. Having a contact with all the relevant data about every object in your life makes delegation a breeze. The contact is updated with every transaction. When you need help just forward it and ask for help. Ask the person to update the contact, as needed, and forward it back to you when they’re done.
Capture Process & Procedures – Voice mail access/shortcuts, directions to the mailbox, directions to a store, web menu navigation, who you last talked with and what happened, what are the usual procedures that happen around this object or vendor? Why be forced to rediscover this info every time you deal with the vendor? Why be forced to write down directions or access instructions every time you need help? Also, If you delegate a task involving the item then the person who help you has a place to capture process and procedures.
Enables Turnover – When it’s time to turn over the management of an object, thing or vendor you’ll be very glad to have all the relevant information and history in a simple contact you can attach to an e-mail.

Pointers to Physical Locations

Most items have a physical location or a folder in the filing cabinet associated with them. These locations don’t change often and rarely need to be accessed. However, if their location changes update the field in your contact. It will greatly assist in delegating and turning over the management of the item. It will also keep you from procrastinating should the folder be required to perform the next action.

Search Tags

I recommend putting search tags in each contact for two reasons:

They help find an object or vendor when you can’t remember its name. Just search by keyword to find the item.
They enable grouping items by keywords since most software will search and group by any text in the notes field of a contact.

For instance, every contact related to flying has the word ‘pilot’ in the notes of the contact. When focusing on that aspect of my life I can search for all contacts containing that keyword. Clever use of keywords enables some incredible uses. If you were to put keywords in each contact relating to Project, Role, Area of Focus, Entity, Responsibility etc., then you could spontaneously group all contacts:

Tied to a credit card that’s about to expire.
Whose address has to be changed if a business address is changed.
Related to my search for land in Wyoming.
Related to my role as a father.
Related to my rental house on Main street.

No need to go overboard; keep it simple. But, you can get a lot of bang out of the two seconds it takes to put a keyword in a contact.

Tracking Them Tracking You

More often than not you need to be more organized than the vendors you employ. When one of your search tags, above, shows a vendor who tracks you by a certain address you need to have that address in the contact you keep on them. You don’t need to put your full address, credit card, etc., just an abbreviation for it.

Also, the Journal History may help navigate the internal processes of a vendor, if needed. For instance, if you’re trying to obtain service it’s better to say, “I spoke to Bill Myers on 4/3/09 and he told me to call back, today, and ask for Nancy if the rebate was not received” than to say, “I forget when I called or who I spoke to, but, still haven’t received anything in the mail”.

Keep it Secure and Updated

Techniques that optimize action tend to consolidate data. Protecting access to your contacts is urgent if you use this method of tracking objects & vendors.

Make sure to keep the contact updated, regularly. Type in a few words in the Journal History section each time an action is performed.

Track Objects & Vendors, not Projects

I once tried to use contacts to manage projects. It didn’t work because it overloads the notes section of the contact. It’s best to use contacts to manage the objects that projects revolve around. Consider using a separate contact to track the following items:

Software, vendors, bank accounts, web ids, voice mail instructions, magazine subscriptions, websites, guns, air conditioner, appliances, phones, cell phone, light bulbs, batteries taken by alarms, web subscriptions, Organization affiliations, Camcorder, camera, certifications, car, cable, internet provider, Costco card, voice mail instructions, utilities, car insurance, rental house contacts/crucial info, copier/printer, etc..

My Template

Whenever a new object, thing or vendor enters your life create a new contact and Cut & Paste this little template into the notes section of the contact. Put the Name, address, phone and e-mail of the contact in the normal fields for the contact. Then, quickly scan the template fields and fill in whatever you think will be needed to track the item.

As payments, transactions, name changes occur take a few seconds to update the contact notes. Just a few words in the Journal History can be a lifesaver when coming back up to speed on an item.

As mentioned, the template, below, is what I use, personally. Feel free to create your own or use no template, at all. Whatever keeps the right data at your fingertips and equips you for action is the best solution.

——Paste template, below this line, into notes section of the contact——-

Search Tags: [Put text here to enable you to find this contact]

Shared Drive Location(s): [Path on computer to directory or files about this object]
Physical File Location(s): [Name of reference folder in filing cabinet, Any applicable physical storage area]

Type: [Object, vendor, website, service, utility, etc.]
Services: [brief description of what this object does]

Info this contact has on Us: [How does vendor track you, what have you told them?]
Account #: [What is this vendors acct# for you]
Userid: [login or otherwise]
Password:
Entity:[Is this account with you or with an entity?]
Name: [What name do they have, if any?]
Address:
phone:
e-mail: [E-mail used by vendor to contact you]
spoken password:
credit card on file:

Method of Payment: Text
Entity who Pays:
Bank Account:
Automated?:
Frequency:
Amt. Due:
Date Due:

Info Unique to this Contact:
Serial #:
SKU #:
Model #:
Where Purchased?:
Order #:

Vendor Provides Multiple Services?
Vendor Has More Than one Primary Product:
Who do we talk to at this company?

Procedure(s):
To Pay Vendor:
To Change Address:
To Add Services:
To Cancel Account:
To Use Product/Service:

Journal History: [Brief description of your last interaction/transaction]”

——Paste template, above this line, into notes section of the contact——

Example Contact

Note how many of the fields, below, are not even filled out for this piece of software. That’s because those fields aren’t needed to manage the item. The idea is to keep it as simple as possible. I rarely fill out every field. However, using the full template for each item enables my eye to locate fields, quickly.

Search Tags: Omnifocus, GTD, Task Manager, MAC

Shared Drive Location(s): \Applications\Omnifocus, \date\path\here
Physical File Location(s): None, downloaded from web

Type: vendor
Services: software task manager for MAC based on GTD system

Info this contact has on Us:
Account #: OS6465738
Userid: none created yet
Password:
Entity: LLC
Name: My Name
Address: My Address for credit card purchase
phone: My Phone for credit card purchase
e-mail: My e-mail
spoken password: none
credit card on file: LLC Credit Card # Here

Method of Payment: LLC Credit Card
Entity who Pays: LLC
Bank Account: LLC account
Automated?: N/A
Frequency: N/A
Amt. Due: $79 one time purchase
Date Due: N/A

Info Unique to this Contact:
Vendor Provides Multiple Services? Multiple Omni software packages
Vendor Has More Than one Primary Product: omni graffle, sketcher, outliner
Who do we talk to at this company? web purchase only

Licence key = xaoe-4536-axeu-2563-oex5

Procedure(s):N/A
To Pay Vendor:
To Change Address:
To Add Services: www.webaddress_here.com
To Cancel Account:
To Use Product/Service:

Journal History:
Downloaded 14 day trial on 5/1/2010
purchased on 5/14/10, order id=OS6465738, received license key above

input license key into product and activated successfully

Simple and Powerful

Having the relevant data on hand for every object, thing and vendor in my life has been amazingly empowering. I’ve been able to accomplish things while traveling, avoid the hassles of finding support materials before taking action, take simple actions in time to avoid penalties and even turnover intractable admin tasks, as a result.

Family

Insurance is Not Health

By Terence Gillespie April 9, 2010

Health insurance is to health what car insurance is to safety: Both pay for damage only after it’s occurred. Insurance doesn’t prevent anything and may even give a false sense of security leading to the very behavior that necessitates its use.

Health comes from food, nutrition, lifestyle, wise choices, habits and from God’s bountiful earth. Most of that is under your direct control and can’t be delegated.

Whether you pay for medical ‘care’ with insurance or out of your own pocket orthodox medicine deals with the effects of sickness rather than the causes of health. You’re neither safe nor healthy by having the means to pay for your sickness after it occurs. What are you doing to remain healthy and prevent sickness in the first place?

Reliance on orthodox medicine as the only means to provide for health is a poor strategy. In the video, below, meet a group of people who don’t rely on orthodox medicine (Or the insurance that pays for it) for anything. Instead, they invest into the direct causes of health and rely on the best person in the world to take their medicine: Themselves.

You may not agree with everything Mike and his fellow Health Rangers say and do in support of their own health. However, instead of pointing out differences what parts of their approach to health sound like common sense?

People without health insurance are not all homeless, destitute or in ill-health. They may be the most healthy among us. Certainly, the people in the video, above, spend more on their health than someone fully ‘covered’. Yet, we’re supposed to think of them as crazy because:

They don’t want to pay for something they don’t need or use.
They prefer to invest the $1000/month directly on their health and not insurance that only pays for care that doesn’t work, treatments they don’t need and medicine they wouldn’t take even if it was free.
Their children rarely need a doctor, are not sick and will most likely remain so if they follow in their parents’ footsteps. The people in the video believe that part of the reason their children are not chronically sick is because they’ve never received the vaccines we’re made to believe are the only possible means to achieve immunization against disease. They don’t believe that vaccination is a synonym for immunization.
They enjoy supporting companies that make products that keep them healthy. They even say they can afford the organic food and nutrients they need for their health because they don’t waste money on health insurance to pay for orthodox medicine that doesn’t work.
They’re not concerned about getting cancer because the chemo and radiation treatments they would be offered would kill them faster than the cancer.
They say that insurance doesn’t prevent anything because detection is not prevention.
They believe the detection tests themselves are harmful or inaccurate leading to either harm or misdiagnosis. Even if they get sick they’re more likely to choose a treatment that actually works, most of which are outside of the system and wouldn’t be covered by their insurance, anyway!

While everyone is clamoring for something called “Health Care” these people say they don’t have it, don’t want it, don’t need it and wouldn’t take it even if it was free!

Is Zero Health Insurance Optimal?

Modern orthodox medicine handles one area, extremely well: Trauma and catastrophic damage to the body. My view on Optimal health care is combining Mike’s approach with an alternative medicine doctor and the ability to pay for the odd catastrophic event. Whether or not insurance is needed to cover all this is another question.

My father used to say that, “Any insurance offered can’t be a good deal“. His reasoning was that any insurance worth it to the customer would cause the insurance companies to lose money and that never happens.

While my fathers view was a bit extreme insurance companies do have the resources to study every angle and risk. On average, most of the events they would insure are more cost-effectively self-insured. One of the guys in the video alludes to this when he says that by investing in their own health they are really self-insuring their own health care. The big picture of whether health insurance is needed, at all, breaks down like this, in my view:

Good food, nutrition, lifestyle, wise choices & habits – Requires some money, study and time but no insurance.
Alternative medicine doctor – Very reasonable cost per visits which are usually preventative in nature. No insurance required. Ironically, since the visits and natural medicines recommended are preventative ‘health’ insurance is less inclined to reimburse for these visits, anyway.
Catastrophic medical – If you get hit by a bus you’ve got to pay to get put back together. Orthodox medicine handles this well, but, the costs are high. My recommendation is to put aside 1/3 of what you would pay for health insurance, on a monthly basis, to pay directly for anything that may happen. Ironically, the fact that most pay for catastrophic medical with insurance greatly inflates the price. You need to negotiate the price back down to the non-insurance inflated cost. I have done this twice in my life: Once for dental work and once for surgery. My direct family members have done the same. It would take a separate article to cover this topic well. I only describe it here to present a complete picture of alternative ways to pay for every aspect of one’s own medical care.

A Service is Not a Right

If a service is a right then doctors and nurses are slaves. How long will doctors and nurses continue to sacrifice and pay for their extensive medical training to keep us well if their only reward is to be made slaves of the people they serve?

Indeed, socialized medicine is a prime cause for the ‘brain drains’ that follow in their wake. The best students stop going to medical school, interns and residents opt out, current doctors quit medicine and there are massive doctor and nurse shortages. These shortages would be difficult to handle even with current demand. As millions of magically ‘entitled’ people are added to ‘the system’ the quality of medical care declines fast for everyone. In Canada, such shortages have given rise to illegal clinics just to meet basic health care needs. Officials pretend not to notice hundreds of illegal clinics because they enable them to say that their socialized medical programs are working well.

I’m all for working towards a solution where all people can receive medical care. However, turning a service into a right has so many historical precedents of destroying the service in question that it’s hard to believe anyone who really wants to help people would try it (Again). More importantly, turning a service into a right is morally wrong and turns the service providers into slaves. Realizing this the service providers simply stop providing and less people are served than before the ‘fix’ was implemented.

There are 307 Million people in the US. If 40 Million don’t have health insurance then 87% of the population is insured. Destroying the entire health care system for 13% of the population would be bad enough if it weren’t for the point of this article that . . .

Insurance is Not Health

Insurance doesn’t prevent sickness or promote health. Detection is not prevention and treatments are rarely cures. The detection, treatment, drugs and procedures that are most likely to be reimbursable by your ‘health’ insurance deal only with the effects of sickness rather than the causes of health. Focusing on being reimbursed for treatments that don’t work perpetuates a flawed system.

Health comes from food, nutrition, lifestyle, wise choices, habits and from God’s bountiful earth. Most of that is under your direct control and can’t be delegated. Invest into the direct causes of health and rely on the best person in the world to take your medicine: You.

Banking

Optimal Barter Equation

By Terence Gillespie January 19, 2010

An item with money qualities might be a good barter item. To be an Optimal Barter Item it must also directly fulfill multiple human needs in the circumstances of the barter.

For each scenario under consideration ask yourself what items would directly fulfill multiple human needs and be widely accepted in trade in excess of the trader’s need. If the item is also transportable, divisible, storable, measurable and hard to counterfeit then it’s a winner: An alternative form of money in the circumstances of the barter.

Since anything can be used in barter it’s worth making an equation as a tool to separate the wheat from the chaff:

(M * N * LP)_1-n = Optimal Barter

Where M are the money qualities, N is how directly the item fulfills a need and LP is the Life Priority of the need fulfilled. Note the 1-n subscript. That’s because an item can fulfill needs across multiple categories of life. In fact, the best barter items do.

Money & Substitutes – (M)

One way to compare barter items with each other is to compare each with money and rate them according to how they measure up. The top items on the resulting list are possible money substitutes. Their fulfillment of human needs, however, is another matter entirely. See ‘Ammo vs. Money’ where I compare ammunition with all the attributes of money.

When barter is king money is dethroned: It takes a backseat to the direct fulfillment of human needs. The concept of money and its substitutes is still useful, however, because many items that fulfill human needs are also decent money substitutes.

Water, food, syringes, antibiotics, IV Lines, portable water filters, firearms, ammunition, batteries and radios are worth more than the money used to buy them even in good times. In a crisis some of these are needed so badly they might overcome the biggest stumbling block of barter: The lack of a double coincidence of wants.

Direct Need Fulfillment – (N)

Water quenches thirst, Food satisfies hunger, Tarps block rain and wind.

The more direct the fulfillment the higher quality the item. I’m a big fan of substitutes but they’re not as easily recognized in the midst of a crisis as the real thing. Since barter items are best stocked after covering the essentials for your family it’s best to focus on items that fulfill needs, directly. There’s one exception to this line of thinking.

The best barter items span multiple categories of use: They directly fulfill some needs and indirectly fulfill others. Water is an easy example: It directly quenches thirst and cleans skin and has an almost infinite number of other uses. Water’s indirect uses multiply it’s desirability as is the case with other Optimal barter candidates.

Life Priorities – (LP)

It’s a constant burden to mankind that choices must be made with imperfect knowledge. With perfect knowledge ordering priorities is a cinch. However, wait too long for specifics to prepare and risk not being prepared, at all.

My Life Priorities are the same in good times and in bad. In a crisis I’ll rely on intuition to reorder priorities according to the scenario. For instance, although Water is #1 the urgency in finding a source is greater in a desert than in a rainforest. Medicine is #5 though in the absence of sickness or injury securing communications might pay bigger dividends. These are not compromises; just working flexibility and a trust of intuition after being prepared, in general.

For the purposes of preparing in advance for a non-specific crisis I’ve chosen to order life’s priorities in the following categories:

Water
Shelter & Clothing
Food
Security
Health & Medicine
Communications
Power
Hygiene & Sanitation
General Tools
Transportation

Going through your own reasoning process and placing these categories in order is surprisingly useful. Knowing your priorities is key in making disciplined and balanced choices when allocating limited resources.

Narrowing Down the Barter List

Think through your Life Priorities and order them into categories (As many as you find useful).
Consider the bolded items in the Comprehensive Barter Item List as barter items worthy of consideration (And please send me your suggestions).
Group the resulting items from step 2 that strike you as filling the most pressing human Needs into your life priority categories.
Sort items within each category by your sense of its importance.
Use your Life Priority categories and assign a primary category and then the secondary categories that the item serves.
Take each item compare it with the attributes of money and assign a value where 10 = Money and 0 = nothing in common with money.
Keep sorting using the criteria in steps 4 thru 7 until you narrow the list down to 20 to 50 items or however many you’d like to use as input to the Barter Equation.

The resulting items are the best items to use as input to the equation.

Consider Three Scenarios

Consider narrowing down your preparation scenarios to three:

The most likely threat to your physical location.
The threat that comes to mind when consulting your informed intuition.
The everyday potential threats and outages that normal life presents.

For example, my three are Fire, Dollar devaluation/Inflation and Electrical Power Outages.

Applying the Equation

Grabbing some promising barter items from the Comprehensive Barter Item List for my three scenarios here’s my impression of the values that should be assigned to them for each variable in the Barter Equation. The equation has not yet been applied. They have merely been sorted by their primary Life Priority category and then by their respective Money qualities. This is as far as people usually go when when considering barter items.

The higher the N the more direct its fulfillment of LP1 (As Ordered by my Life Priorities, above).
The higher the M the more qualities of Money the Item has.
LP1 is the items primary fulfillment category (In my opinion) and LP2 thru N are its secondary fulfillment categories.

Sorted by Primary Life Priority, then by Money Qualities

Barter Equation not Applied.

Item	N	M	LP1	LP2 thru N
Water Packets	10	7	1	3,5,7,9
Portable Filters	5	5	1	3,5,7,9
Duct Tape	7	7	2	4,5,7,8,9
Tarps	8	6	2	4,7,8,9
Aluminum Foil	4	8	3	5,7,9
Coconut Oil	10	7	3	5,7,9
Eggs & Milk	10	6	3	5
Baking Soda	3	5	3	5,7,9
Ammunition	8	8	4	3,6,9
Syringes	5	6	5	7,9
Alcohol Wipes	6	6	5	7,9
Antibiotic Lotion	8	6	5	7
Fuel	8	6	7	4,5,6,9,10
Generator	8	2	7	4,5,6,9,10
Soap Bars	7	6	8	5

Applying the Optimal Barter Equation (First Dimension Only)

Here is where the items rank after using a spreadsheet to apply the equation to each items M, N and the LP of their primary category only. In other words, this is where the item would rank if its fulfillment of needs in other life priority categories was left out of consideration.

(M * N * LP) = Optimal Barter

Rank	Item	N	M	LP1	LP2 thru N
1	Water Packets	10	7	1	3,5,7,9
2	Coconut Oil	10	7	3	5,7,9
3	Eggs & Milk	10	6	3	5
4	Ammunition	8	8	4	3,6,9
5	Duct Tape	7	7	2	4,5,7,8,9
6	Tarps	8	6	2	4,7,8,9
7	Antibiotic Lotion	8	6	5	7
8	Aluminum Foil	4	8	3	5,7,9
9	Portable Filters	5	5	1	3,5,7,9
10	Alcohol Wipes	6	6	5	7,9
11	Fuel	8	6	7	4,5,6,9,10
12	Syringes	5	6	5	7,9
13	Soap Bars	7	6	8	5
14	Baking Soda	3	5	3	5,7,9
15	Generator	8	2	7	4,5,6,9,10

Applying the Optimal Barter Equation to All Dimensions of Each Barter Item

Applying the equation now to both the primary and secondary life priority categories the item serves. Notice the increased liquidity of items that serve a broad number of categories.

(M * N * LP)_1-n = Optimal Barter

Rank	Item	N	M	LP1	LP2 thru N
1	Water Packets	10	7	1	3,5,7,9
2	Duct Tape	7	7	2	4,5,7,8,9
3	Ammunition	8	8	4	3,6,9
4	Coconut Oil	10	7	3	5,7,9
5	Tarps	8	6	2	4,7,8,9
6	Fuel	8	6	7	4,5,6,9,10
7	Eggs & Milk	10	6	3	5
8	Portable Filters	5	5	1	3,5,7,9
9	Aluminum Foil	4	8	3	5,7,9
10	Antibiotic Lotion	8	6	5	7
11	Alcohol Wipes	6	6	5	7,9
12	Generator	8	2	7	4,5,6,9,10
13	Soap Bars	7	6	8	5
14	Syringes	5	6	5	7,9
15	Baking Soda	3	5	3	5,7,9

The above fifteen choices were chosen only to show how to apply the equation. It would be interesting to apply the equation to all barter items and see the results. If there’s enough interest that would be a fun exercise for another article.

The resulting Top 10 items of your application of the equation are most worthy of your barter resources. They will directly fulfill the needs of your family while providing a backup form of money or trade liquidity during barter economies. Your proposed trades with these items are more likely to be accepted by fellow traders than those who haven’t gone through the exercise.

Whiskey, Cigarettes & Chocolate

These three items have proven themselves to be good barter items in real barter ‘economies’. The equation handles them well if you add them to your Life Priority list and give them a high “M”, which they deserve.

For instance, perhaps you would swap my priority of “Transportation” with “Vices” to account for Whiskey and Cigarettes. You would also rate these items high in “M” because they do fair well as money substitutes.

Chocolate fits naturally in the Food and Health categories and has a high “M” if the climate is not too warm.

The value of everything varies continuously in time. That doesn’t mean there’s no value in evaluating their relative standing in the only moment we have: Now.

Optimal Barter Items are like Superfoods

To be honest I had a different equation written when beginning this article. After going through the entire process it became obvious that some items are to barter what superfoods are to health: They provide a kind of comprehensive nourishment; they fulfill multiple high-priority needs!

I did not rig the equation to favor items that met multiple needs. I only discovered that no item that fulfilled only one need could compete with the liquidity or desirability of a barter item that fulfilled needs across the spectrum of life’s highest priorities.

The Trade Trumps the Traded

As with the use of money trade is more valuable than what’s traded. Who makes that judgment? You do by making the trade. After all, if you’d rather keep the items you’re exchanging then why don’t you? Even protesting ‘no choice’ admits you value what you get more than what you give. And, your fellow trader feels the same, no?

The Trade Trumps the Traded, every time, as evidenced by the fact that the Trade was made.

Human Needs Trump Liquidity

The purpose of your Optimal Barter Equation is to zero-in on the barter items most worthy of your limited resources. They’re the most liquid components of your preparedness plan. Since the top candidates are also essential it’s a judgment call to decide when you have enough. While your overall preparedness will be well served with these items be careful not to prioritize barter items over the broad range of essentials needed by every family.

Banking

How To Pay Off Your House using Silver & Inflation – Part 2

By Terence Gillespie November 7, 2009

The Daily Grind

Working this plan to pay off your house doesn’t free you from the daily grind, in the short term. You’ll still need to:

Keep making the payments on your mortgage.
Keep making payments on other fixed debts and expenses.
Scrape and save whatever you can.
Store your savings into silver until you reach your target number of ounces.
Keep your head above water during this disintegrating economy.
Monitor the price of silver and be willing and able to cash in when the time is right.
Cash in, pay the taxes, make large payments on your mortgage and lay low.

Doomed From the Start?

Are you paying on a mortgage from the overvalued bubble market?

The contrast between the difficulty of paying off a bubble mortgage and buying a new house in cash is going to get extreme. If it’s too much harder then consider a short sale, rent for a while and use your silver to purchase a new home when the time is right. You might as well benefit from lower housing prices.

As mentioned in Part 1 the money the bank ‘gave’ you was conjured out of thin air because of The Awful Truth of How US Dollars are Created. It’s morally wrong to break a legal contract and I’m not advising one to do that. However, many debtors are questioning whether a mortgage is a legally binding contract since the bank doesn’t provide equal consideration (The Bank brings no risk to the contract since the money is created out of thin air using your signature).

Tax on Standing Still

Standing still will cost more dollars in the future than it does now. If you manage to come up with more dollars to stand still you’ll be taxed as if you’ve gained something.

This double theft of inflation and more taxes is ridiculous, of course. But, you’ll have to put more silver aside to pay the taxes on your non-gain. Otherwise, you’ll fall short of you’re goal to pay off the house.

How much more silver you’ll need for taxes is a function of the size of your mortgage and your current and future tax rates. It’s a moving target, but, you’ll have to take a stab at quantifying it to achieve your goal.

Federal

Buying or selling back silver eagles require no 1099 broker reporting. $1000 face value of junk silver (752 oz silver) is the threshold of reportabability. Less than 1000 oz of other forms is not reportable. A tax advisor would probably tell you that its good to know the reporting rules, but, they don’t affect the definition of when you’ve realized a capitol gain. You may, however, want to sell in increments less than 1000 oz. to minimize paperwork.

Sales Tax

Purchase in increments greater than $1500 to avoid paying sales tax on the purchase. Check your state rules for the threshold.

How Much Silver Do You Need?

Enough to pay off your mortgage, pay taxes on the non-gain and cover the spread on the buy and sell of the silver. If you can swing it why not add all your fixed debts to the mortgage amount and buy your way out of all debts?

The 1980 price of silver was $50/oz. The inflation adjusted price of $50 in 1980 is $129 in 2008. And yet, the current October 2009 spot price of silver is $16.32/oz.

Based on your belief use a silver price of anything between $35 and $129 for your calculations of the number of ounces to purchase with today’s savings. Then pick the month and year you think it will be worth that price. My number is $75.

I believe the dollar will fall and silver will rise in dollar terms so that one ounce of silver will be denominated in at least 75 dollars within three years. Tell me that its November 2012 and silver is $75 an once and I wouldn’t think you were saying anything extraordinary.

Example

Principal owed = $100K
Silver Now = $16.32
Silver Then = $75
Cap gains tax = 15%
Spread on the buy = 6%
Spread on the Sell = 2%
Ounces needed = 1537 costing $26,589 in todays dollars with buy spread
Sale price of 1537 oz. after paying sell spread = $112,969
Cap gains paid = $12,957 (costing 173 ounces at $75/oz)
Net (After taxes and spreads) = $100,012

So, for every dollar you save in silver you’ll be able to payoff 3.8 dollars of mortgage after paying the taxes on the silver gain if silver goes to $75.

How does that compare to saving dollars in a bank at 0 interest? Let’s say every dollar you have now is worth 60 cents then. That means instead of having 3.8 dollars you’ll have 0.6 dollars. That means you’ll have 6.3 times more dollars in your hand if your savings is in silver rather than dollars (3.8 / 0.6 = 6.33).

Step-by-Step

Decide what you think the price of silver will be in three years.
Look up how much you’ll owe on your house in three years.
Divide principal owed / silver spot in #1.
Add in the buy spread on the purchase
Add in the taxes on the gain.
Add in the sell spread.
Add 2, 4, 5 and 6 and recalculate #3 substituting the new number for the numerator (It’s recursive because of the taxes. I made a spreadsheet to calculate 1-7).
Find a source to purchase the silver.
Purchase the silver
Purchase a gun safe, not necessarily shipped to your own property.
Take physical delivery of your silver and store it somewhere safe — The gun safe being one of many options.
Keep making your mortgage payments and other expenses
Monitor the spot price of silver
Get as familiar and comfortable with selling your silver as you did in buying it in step 9.
Wait until the value of your silver hits your spot price.
Sell the silver in increments that enable you to minimize taxes on the gain.
As you sell the silver make huge payments on the principal of your mortgage.

Check the current spot price here and find a local coin shop.

That’s it! Don’t think about it too much or cash in the silver too early. Get back to your life.

If You Don’t Have the Money

The savings required to buy enough silver to pay off your mortgage is small in comparison to the size of a mortgage. However, it’s by no means a trivial amount of savings.

If you don’t have enough then either buy what you can or focus on other real assets. I keep a running list of my favorite real assets in Checklist for Hard Times. In that article I recommend not buying precious metals until you have the real things needed to fulfill the needs of your family. Providing shelter (Paying off the house) certainly qualifies as providing for the needs of your family, in my book.

With all this talk of money and sliver you might be surprised that my philosophy is that Everything is Worth More Than Money.

Belief is Good (And Downside Risk is Minimal)

The technique I’m proposing will work for balanced and financially conservative reasons. Yes, silver is undervalued, but, don’t bet the farm on it. Rather, payoff the farm with it. Use the rest of your savings to hedge risk and purchase tools and seeds for the harvest.

What I’m not saying:

Buy silver because you’ll make a lot of money.
Silver is your last chance at an investment of a lifetime.
Put every spare dime into more silver.
The silver market is manipulated and will spring back with a vengence.

I can’t make these statements because markets can be manipulated and investors can be wrong longer than you or I can remain solvent.

What I am saying:

The dollar will continue to fall and there is no government plan, action or will to save it.
The dollar will not be saved by deflation (Occuring simultaneously with overpowering inflation).
Silver is the most undervalued candidate among many other choices for hard assets in which to preserve savings.
Silver is not your only alternative for this plan. It’s just what I think is the best alternative.
Silver will preserve, though not necessarily increase your real purchasing power. It is the preservation, not the increase that this plan depends on.

Whether you execute the plan depends on your belief. Writers that specialize in precious metals are better sources to hone your beliefs than I can be in this article. I’ll list my favorites, below and suggest a reading sequence.

Belief is best when it comes from your own research. I recommend reading the following articles, in this order, to optimize your time.

Banking

How To Pay Off Your House using Silver & Inflation – Part 1

By Terence Gillespie October 30, 2009

In 1980 it took 814 ounces of silver to purchase a median-price home in the US.¹ In today’s dollar 814 ounces would cost you $13,154.²

If this happens again you’ll be able to purchase a home, free and clear, for $13,154 of today’s dollar if stored in silver instead of the bank.

This article is not about buying new houses. It’s about a technique to get out of debt and own the house you live in. The debt I’m referring to, here, is fixed: Your rate and monthly payments are the same for the life of the loan.

You need only track the remaining principal on your mortgage and the spot price of silver to come up with input numbers for my proposed technique. Whether or not you execute the plan will depend on your belief.

Belief is best when it comes from your own research. I’ll provide some points of departure for that research but want to focus on execution, here.

Perhaps your belief will come easier knowing that what I’m proposing is just a . . .

Faster Version of the ‘Same Old Thing’

As a debtor, inflation helps pay off your mortgage if your wages keep up.

Every monthly payment is worth less to the bank. The inflation (Theft) is slow enough that wages get a chance to catch up. They rarely do keep pace, but, the number of dollars you receive usually does increase over time.

Three things are happening here on a normal basis as you pay off your mortgage:

Your getting paid more dollars from your employer or customers as you attempt to maintain purchasing power.
Each of your fixed payments are worth less to the bank.
The value of the balance due on the mortgage decreases by the principal portion of your payment and the inflation adjusted value of the remaining debt.

To speed up this existing process I propose that more of the the fruits of your labor be stored in silver to preserve (And possibly increase) its purchasing power. In effect, you’ll be speeding up step 1, above, by translating back your silver savings into dollars at some future date and paying down your mortgage. By that time, however, the dollar will have fallen and silver will have risen.

The silver you cash back into dollars will pay off a larger chunk of the currency your mortgage is denominated in: Dollars. Those increased number dollars may or may not have more purchasing power. But, you don’t need them to. All you need is for the silver to buy more fiat dollars to satisfy the mortgage. In other words, the mere act of preserving existing purchasing power will give the same effect as an increase in purchasing power when it comes to ‘purchasing’ debt.

In this one respect the falling dollar can be used as a One Trick Pony to help you escape from fixed debt.

Give to Caesar What is Caesar’s

As the dollar falls silver (And gold) rise in dollar terms to accurately reflect their unchanging value through the prism of a disintegrating metric (The dollar). Happily for you that disintegrating metric is what you owe the bank. Your mortgage says you owe dollars, not gold or silver. So store real value. When that real value is inevitably worth more tokens in the future turn them over to the bank to purchase your freedom.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s: The tokens he conjured out of thin air that now enslave you.

This Bubble’s For You

As people start to catch on and gravitate towards true value more will flee the dollar and buy up real assets. Silver is one of the prime candidates. The above ground silver available for purchase starts to disappear. This secondary event, in turn, causes more flight from the dollar which feeds an even more rapid rise in the price of silver. Then silver, itself, starts to rise even above its true value being one of the few worthy recipients of the flight from the dollar.

The amplification effect on price between silver scarcity and flight from the dollar continues until it takes the familiar shape of historical bubbles we’re now all familiar with. However, knowing this in advance and setting aside a modest amount of silver means that This Bubble’s For You.

I base this on . . .

A Radical Prediction that What’s Happening Will Continue

The Dollar Has Fallen 40% in the Last Eight Years. Contemplating another 40% decline in the dollar is no more outrageous than expecting things to continue as they have been.

If the dollar falls another 40% then a mortgage of $100K will be worth $60K in current value. Before shedding too many tears for the bank recall that the money they ‘gave’ you was conjured out of thin air because of The Awful Truth of How US Dollars are Created.

Apart from some temporary uptick the MSM will seize on as ‘proof of recovery’ do you know of anything being done that will save our fiat tokens?

Get On the Short List

You won’t fully benefit from the decreased value of the mortgage unless you can manage one of the following:

Your wages keep up with Inflation. If you increased your wages by 40% from 2001 to 2009 it was due to your own efforts not the silly CPI adjustments referred to as your raise.
You get paid the same wages in a currency that maintains its purchasing power. If you can manage this you either don’t live in the US or I’m reading your financial columns and watching your youtube videos. Thank you and enjoy the fresh air of the Swiss mountains or I hope your Mandarin lessons are going well, Mr. Rogers.
You use today’s dollar to purchase an asset or commodity that maintains its purchasing power.
Bingo! Now, that’s I’m talking about.
You come up with a money making idea that brings in tons of dough. Creating value for our fellow human beings is what it’s all about. Please don’t get lazy and keep the fruits of your labor in tokens.

With sharp inflation it’s a challenge to keep wages up even if you own the company. Business owners walk their own tightrope raising prices. Will the inevitable price increases be passed onto employees, immediately? Actually, they can’t.

Conducting business with a volatile currency is an expertise more likely possessed in a Banana Republic. If you’re trying to acquire such expertise there’s a fabulous little book that has a place on your nightstand: The Hyperinflation Survival Guide: Strategies for American Businesses

Stay Tuned for Part 2 of 2

I’ll get very specific in Part 2 of 2 with:

The Daily Grind
Tax on Standing Still
How Much Silver Do you Need?
Step-by-Step Implementation
If You Don’t Have the Money
Belief is Good (And Downside Risk is Minimal)

¹Guide to Investing in Gold and Silver, Michael Maloney, Page 152. Maloney uses the Case-Shiller Home Price Index January 1980 home price of $42,747 divided by the silver price of $52.50/oz.

²It’s 10/30/2009 and silver is $16.32/oz. The dollar index is 76.38.

Management

No Body is Perfect?

Not IF, but WHAT?

What’s Wrong With Me?

The Earlier, The Better

1. – Save Time

2. – Get Smart

3. – Reposition Your Assets

Scriptural Basis & Motivation

Mission Statement

Goals

Strategy

A Foundation in Two Steps

A Decentralized Plan

Primary Determining Factor

Gathering in His Name

Clearing the Decks (& Network), in Advance

The Rest of the Plan

Plan the Site – Then Build Small and Useful

Easements and Road Access

Universal Site Plan

Possibilities

For Example

Build or Sell?

Most Bang for the Buck

Overnight Stays

Tent & Rental Car

Lean-to or Shed

Mobile Home or RV

Time Out for Perspective

Nothing Wasted

Storage

Gotta Love These Pole Barns

Security

Put a Web Cam on it?

Retreat

Income

A Tiny House

Two is One

Electricity

Water

Cell Phone Coverage

Structure vs. Strategy

When in Doubt

Build the Smaller Thing

Cut to the Chase

Temporary Stuctures

Build It Backwards Advantages

More Crucial Than Ever (And Still Works!)

Keeping Your Nose Clean is Not a Plan

The Data Beast

The Cops and the Mail

Getting Back to Normal

Know Thine Enemy

Batten Down these Hatches

Privacy Premiums

The Rules

You Are Your Data

Opportunity in Crisis

Never Take Candy from a Psychopath

A Little Goes A Long Way

The ONUS is On Us

Privacy Reference

Why Asset Prices Collapse

Women, Computers and Volcker to the Rescue?

Inflation and What Else?

Wealth Transfer around Collapsing Asset Prices

Prior to Collapse

Foreigner in Your Own Country

Field Trip

Factors of Your Production

“Before you hunker down get out of the way”4

Wealth Storage

Collapsing Assets

Signals to Look For

During Collapse

Shopping List

Gold Cost Average the Purchase of Real Estate

After the Collapse

Don’t Be a Vulture

“Before you hunker down get out of the way”⁴